“Crossover” Consulting Firm Taps Latino Market Pro

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‘Crossover’ Consulting Firm Taps Latino Market Pro

By CLAUDIA PESCHIUTTA

Staff Reporter

As advertisers and broadcasters become increasingly interested in the growing Latino market, a well-known consulting firm is seeking help from a prominent Latina entertainment executive to get in on the action.

Frank N. Magid Associates Inc. has entered into a partnership with Galan Entertainment, founded by Nely Galan, to create a marketing and consulting firm for entertainment companies and other businesses interested in reaching Latinos in the U.S. and abroad.

Iowa-based Magid and Galan Entertainment, a Venice production and marketing firm focused on creating “crossover” Latino programming, recently launched their joint venture with a handful of clients. For now, Magid-Galan primarily operates out of Magid’s Los Angeles and New York offices.

One person from each company is assigned full-time to the venture, but employees from both will work on projects for the firm.

Galan, a Cuban-born immigrant who left her post as Telemundo’s president of entertainment in 1999, said she would offer Magid something that can be hard to find “the gut thing of knowing your market.”

Magid-Galan is in a good position, according to Roberto Orci, president of La Agencia de Orci & Asociados, a local advertising agency that targets the Latino market.

“Magid-Galan is new,” he said. “You have researchers who call themselves ‘consultants,’ you have people in between jobs who call themselves ‘consultants’ but there is no real (Latino) management and consulting group.”

Galan said it’s not uncommon for a client to call up and ask, “Who is so-and-so?,” in reference to a Latino celebrity, or to pose such questions as “Is it politically correct to put a Cuban to play a Mexican?”

“I’m in the game,” said Galan, president and chief executive of Galan Entertainment. “I know which is the next talent that’s going to hit that, maybe, Pepsi should sign.”

“There are very few people with the combination of knowledge and skills to provide firms with this sort of counsel on their strategies…to target the Latino community, which is a huge missed opportunity,” said Brent Magid, president and chief executive of Magid.

Being associated with Magid, which is experienced in general market media, could help the firm attract clients who might be hesitant about the Latino market. “There is something to be said for a lack of understanding of the marketplace and really staying focused on what most people know,” Magid said.

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